Crossing the border with Blue Jays beat reporter Jordan Bastian.

House Cleaning

There are a few items to address here on the blog today. First off, congrats are in order for Aaron Hill and Adam Lind, who were well-deserving recipients of Silver Slugger Awards on Thursday night.

As a duo, Hill and Lind became only the second Jays teammates in team history to finish with at least 35 homers, 35 doubles and 100 RBIs in the same season. The 222 combined RBIs for the pair were the most in a season by a Toronto duo since ’03.

It marked only the third time in Blue Jays history that two players from Toronto received Silver Sluggers in the same season. Other winners from the AL included Yankees first baseman Mark Teixeira, Rays third baseman Evan Longoria, Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter, Twins catcher Joe Mauer and outfielders Torii Hunter of the Angels, Ichiro Suzuki of the Mariners and Jason Bay of the Red Sox.

“It felt pretty cool to finally win something after being up for a couple things,” Lind said. “It felt great and I’m really excited to get the trophy with everybody’s name on it. I’m more excited about their names than my name.”

QUOTABLE:

“Great. It’s one of those things — whatever. It’s out of our hands. We like all the guys that are there and they feel — Alex and I guess everybody else — feels that this is the best way to go about it. We’re behind them. Our job is to go play.” — Hill, asked about the changed to the coaching staff

“A great thing about Murph is he lets you be who you are and he works with that. He doesn’t try to necessarily change who you are or change what you do. He just lets you be yourself and become as good as you can at what you do. So that’ll be good, and the fact that I have a pretty long relationship and a decent personal relationship and things like that. It’ll be fun to go down there and hear his comments every day in the batting cage.” — Lind, asked about Dwayne Murphy being named the new hitting coach

FROM THE GM:

“Our young starters, I think almost every GM has asked about them. Understandbly so. We’d like to keep all of them, but that being said, as I’ve told every other GM, if they have trade ideas and thoughts I’d like to hear them. I feel like any dialogue that we have, the more dialogue that we do have, an idea may come from it. That being said, we’re very happy with our young starters. We’d like to keep them, but we certainly have to be open minded.” — Anthopoulos, on trading young pitchers

“If you look at the B.J. Ryan contract, that was something that ownership allowed us to walk away from. I think it really comes down to, ‘What does it get us in return? What is the opportunity for the club?’ If we were to pay money on a contract, of course, at all costs you try to avoid it, but if that means that you’re getting a player that the net value with having to pay some of the contract makes it a better move for the organization and strengthens the club, I think you have to be open to it.” — Anthopoulos, on being willing to swallow part of a big contract in a trade

“What I feel very good about is, so far in the offseason, every player that has been talked about in a transaction, every trade that has been made, I’ve been aware of that player being available. In certain respects, I’ve been involved in some of those trade talks. I think that’s really imperative for me going forward.” — Anthopoulos

UNDER THE KNIFE

Center fielder Vernon Wells underwent surgery to repair cartilage damage inhis left wrist on Thursday in Scottsdale, Ariz., where Dr. Donald Sheridan performed the operation. A team official said the procedure went as planned and Wells is expected to be recovered and ready for Spring Training.

All I say about Bautista is I wish we’d never done the trade. I was against the trade when it was announced and still am. Robinson Diaz would look really good right now in a Blue Jays uniform. Diaz and Arencibia would have been a great tandem going forward behind the plate.

Bautista has too may flaws to be anything but a part time MLB player and hopefully not with us.

I realize that it may be necessary to keep some under-achieving veterans on the team (as we cannot trade them or release them). However, I would love to see some of the kids fill some of our bench positions. I know that young kids are suppose to play and not sit on the bench. However, at the same time, I think that some of our kids on the farm should have had a shot at the major-league level by now. Quite frankly, we are not going to win a thing next year, except, perhaps a top 5 first-round draft pick. Let’s clean house with the marginal vets, like Bautista, and roll the dice with the kids. At least this way, we will be able to see the potential, even if it is not displayed consistently. Moreover, who knows, maybe we will discover a diamond in the rough.

All I say about Bautista is I wish we’d never done the trade. I was against the trade when it was announced and still am. Robinson Diaz would look really good right now in a Blue Jays uniform. Diaz and Arencibia would have been a great tandem going forward behind the plate.

Bautista has too may flaws to be anything but a part time MLB player and hopefully not with us. Thanks for this article dear. I really appreciate it guys.
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